Iain MacIntyre: Juolevi fills a need, but still feels like a consolation prize

Olli Juolevi celebrates with the Vancouver Canucks after being selected fifth overall during round one of the 2016 NHL Draft on June 24, 2016 in Buffalo, New York.

Photograph by: Bruce Bennett
, Vancouver Sun

A domino that fell two teams away struck the Vancouver Canucks on Friday night.

The team filled a vital organizational need when it chose Finnish defenceman Olli Juolevi with the fifth pick of the National Hockey League entry draft in Buffalo. But their most important need, finding that rare forward special enough to replace star centre Henrik Sedin in a couple of years, remains.

Immediate draft history is not so much revised as invented. No team publicly admits disappointment at the player it didn’t get because such sentiment is disrespectful — and potentially harmful — to the player it did choose.

And no one should be disappointed to select the top defenceman in any draft year, which is what the Canucks think they got when general manager Jim Benning announced Juolevi’s name.

Juolevi had 56 points in 75 league and playoff games for the London Knights, and won both a Memorial Cup with his Ontario Hockey League team and a world junior championship with Finland.

But in the rarefied air of the draft’s top five, a place the Canucks had not been since Danny and Hank Sedin were chosen second and third in 1999, Vancouver had hoped to claim the kind of centre who is simply unavailable lower down.

For weeks, it appeared Cape Breton Screaming Eagle Pierre-Luc Dubois would be that guy for the Canucks. But the Columbus Blue Jackets disrupted the dominoes when they chose Dubois third, snubbing Finnish star Jesse Puljujarvi, whom they were expected to take. The Edmonton Oilers, who were not going to draft Dubois after taking centres Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl the last two years, happily snapped up Puljujarvi.

And then Vancouver chose Juolevi, plugging a hole in an organization that lacked, short of second-year Canuck Ben Hutton, a defence prospect capable of developing into a top-pairing blue-liner in the NHL.

But when might the Canucks get another chance to draft a powerful forward with game-changing potential like Dubois or Puljujarvi?

It made the Canucks’ “loss” at the draft lottery drawing on April 30, when Vancouver fell to fifth from third just as the odds said they should, even more painful. That luck – not bad, just not good enough — continued Friday.

Juolevi, of course, shouldn’t carry any of this baggage with him into professional hockey.

He is an excellent prospect, even if his game is a quiet one.

“We haven’t drafted a defenceman in the first round in 11 years,” president of hockey operations Trevor Linden said. “Foundationally, there were probably sexier picks out there. But when you talk about building a team, it starts on the back end and that’s why Olli is such a big piece.

“It wasn’t a hard decision with what happened in front of us. We’ve liked Olli for a long time. With the premium on defencemen, you just can’t get these guys and we needed someone who can be a top-pairing defenceman.”

When Linden replaced Mike Gillis as the head of hockey ops 26 months ago, then hired Benning to be his GM, the Canucks’ defence was dangerously old and made more vulnerable by the lack of any blue-chip prospects in the pipeline.

Hutton, a fifth-round pick under Gillis in 2012, has risen meteorically and played in the top-four last season as a rookie in professional hockey. He turned 23 in April.

A month ago, Benning leveraged 20-year-old forward Jared McCann, the second player he chose in the first round in 2014, to acquire 24-year-old defenceman Erik Gudbranson from Florida, which drafted him third overall in 2010.

Huge 21-year-old Russian Nikita Tryamkin, Benning’s third-round choice two years ago, impressively finished last season with the Canucks and has a chance to make the team at training camp in September.

The Canucks’ top-unit pairing of Alex Edler, 30, and Chris Tanev, 26, should have years of superior hockey remaining.

Now add to this group Juolevi, 18. And don’t forget Quebec League defenceman Guillaume Brisebois, the 18-year-old Benning was elated to pick in the third-round last June.

Clearly, the Canucks have the materials to build an impressive defence corps.

The best two prospects in the organization, stud goalie Thatcher Demko and scoring winger Brock Boeser, will help at other positions, possibly as soon as the 2017-18 season.

“We got a special player,” Linden said. “We got a top-pairing defenceman. Obviously, the draft lottery could have gone better for us, but that’s the way it went. After that, you kind of reset and we realized we were still going to get a helluva player. And we did.”

Vancouver’s biggest need for next season is another winger or two who can score. And Benning has vowed to take a run at those players when free agency opens on July 1.

The Canucks’ biggest need down the road, their biggest need three years from now? That big, strong, skilled, elusive first-line centre.

The Canucks have been looking for that player for most of the last 46 years. And after Friday night, having seen that guy brush past them and pull on another team’s jersey, they’re still looking.

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